April 4-8

April 5

After we got back from shopping yesterday we went for another swim just to cool down. No sign of turtles. Today, also being a holiday and Sunday, we will take the dinghy to a different spot and go snorkeling further up the island. We also have to run the motor for  awhile today so we may just go up to the marina at the north end of the island and stay there for a couple of days. It’s only 50 cents a foot and we can get free internet ALL DAY if we want. Not sure how good it is. But when we go to a restaurant for “free internet” we end up spending $10.00 for two drinks; or paying $26.00 for two chicken dinners, two beers and two juices, which is a really great deal!!(Rick can’t drink beer or pop).

This morning we went for another hour long swim to see if we could find another reef or the turtles. No luck. But Tempo, another big cat from Toronto, told us there is a reef on the other side of them heading into shore so we will look for it tomorrow.

Today on the Cruiser’s net we heard a boat called “Flamingo”, who announced that he was new to the harbour.  Ross’s boat was from Meaford and he just arrived here. He used to be a customer at our store!! So we called him after the ‘Net and went over to meet him at 2:00 pm on the Volleyball Beach! Turns out he is friends with Amazing Grace!! They met in the Chesapeake and stared travelling together. Amazing Grace is the big Fontaine Pageot catamaran from Toronto we saw in Bimini. He said he heard us on the radio but wasn’t sure if it was us.

We met up with Brad and Anne [Anneteak] again, and Dabulamanzi, Andrea & Garth with the kids & Grandma from Orillia. We met them in Bimini. We met another couple from the states somewhere but didn’t catch the names. He had a drone! It’s basically a toy plane with a camera on it. Hmm...Aerial shots of the harbours for my articles?

Sitting on the beach we were watching the harbour. All of a sudden a funnel cloud started to form. We watched to see if it would amount to anything but it didn’t.

After sitting and talking to a bunch of people, including Cordell, we all went back to Amazing Grace and played Mexican dominoes ‘til 8 pm! It was a hoot! And no drinking involved!!

April 6, 2015

I cannot believe how fast this time is going!  Already April and we will have to start planning to get back to the States to haul out.

Tonight we are going to the Rake and Scrape. We leave the beach at 6 pm on the water taxi and it brings us back at 10 pm. It will be fun! There are 26 people are already signed up for it!

We were going to go into town today to use the Internet. Cordell is trying to connect with us. But tomorrow will be better so you’ll have to wait. I will be able to post the pictures if we go to town tomorrow.

Two days ago we hoisted the City of Thunder Bay flag because our Canadian flag is wearing out. This morning we got a call from Dream Weaver asking what it was. So Thunder Bay has been recognized in Chicken Harbour…I mean Volleyball Beach. We wish we’d had the Navy league flag with us…

Today is very windy and rough here. We’ve moved the boat from Sand Dollar Beach to Volleyball Beach again. It’s closer to the water taxi and we won’t get as wet coming back to the boat when we get back from town tonight. It’s rough enough that we weren’t going to swim today, but we found another reef. It had a stingray hiding under the sand. You could just see his outline, his eyes and nostril, and his tail. We thought the water would be cold today…ok, less warm. But it was alright.  I hear it snowed 10 inches again in Montreal this weekend.

The Rake and Scrape:  THAT was FUN!!! We went over in the water taxi with 24 other people. And we had already met most of them! We walked around the Lake to Eddie’s and got a table outside. When you walk into Eddie’s it looks like a take-out pizza place but with a lot more waiting room, and a bar with bar stools. It only has 2 tables inside and picnic tables on the porch. But when you walk back to the washrooms, there are two more dining rooms, with linen and centerpieces on the tables!

We sat outside with Flamingo and Amazing Grace and a couple of other boas. Rick and I had grouper, rice and peas, beets and coleslaw. Unfortunately the grouper was way too spicy hot so it didn’t have much taste. But the rest of the dinner was good.  At about 8 pm the band started. It was a couple of goatskin drums, a saw, and two guitars. They were really good! We went inside and danced for a bit. Okay, we just moved but one of the locals joined us and we got a kind of dance lesson.   Later on when I was on the way back from the washroom, I got ambushed by another one and boy could he dance!! We did a sort of jive /jitterbug. I felt like I was on Dancing with the Stars! Too bad it was 10pm [boater’s midnight] and we had to catch the taxi or sleep on the beach! I was ready to go for another hour or so! So next time there is a Rake and Scrape we’re going!!

April 7

This week is supposed to be very windy, stormy and unpredictable weather so we will be sitting here for awhile. The winds are gusting up to 40-50 miles/hr. That’s 80-100 km/hr roughly, so we won’t be doing a lot of dinghying back and forth for a couple of days. We had planned on doing some work today but Ross from Flamingo came by and asked if we were going snorkelling, so we said yes because Cheryl [Amazing Grace] wants to snorkel with me. [?] They called us after lunch so we went into the first Hurricane hole in the harbour to the snorkelling buoys. You tie up your dinghy and snorkel there.

It was a Blue Hole. Along the rock wall of the island it got very deep and there were hundreds of fish.  There was a cave that ran under the rock but no-one [not even Rick] went into it. There was enough surge that it felt like the cave went right through to the ocean. If he’d had diving gear, I know Rick would over to try it. Good thing he doesn’t have gear!

After we left the hole we went to another snorkelling spot that was a reef between Elizabeth Island and Guana Cay. That was amazing. It was another wall that held the ocean back. The Atlantic was slamming into the small rock islands and the outside edge of the reef. When you looked up you could see huge rollers coming at you, but on the shallow side it was almost calm. There weren’t a lot of fish there because of the fast moving water. The tide was coming in and pushing us into the bay.  The water on this side of the reef was only 5-10 feet deep, and clear as a bell. The different coral growing was really amazing and we were there for over an hour swimming. Afterwards we all stopped at our boat [we were the closest] for snacks.

We went over to the Chat ‘n Chill to see if they were open. We had planned to get some conch salad for supper but we missed them. They were just cleaning up. Rick talked to them for a few minutes. I was talking to a guy from Island TIme who was curious about our boat. While he was at the conch shack, a shark came in to see if there were any bits of conch or any small rays to eat. Tomorrow we are going to play dominoes on the beach in the afternoon. I never get time to clean or do any work, we are so busy!

April 8, 2015

OK so we haven’t moved to the marina yet. If we go up there we will miss all these new friends!  This is another one of those places that you don’t want to leave!So when we called Flamingo to tell the we were going to move to the marina, he said he had a generator and a charger we could borrow to get our batteries charged. We will get gas for it and borrow it and charge us up so we can stay here a little longer! Yay!